What's with the reinforcements feature?

[DICY]

I have to say I'm a bit disappointed that the reinforcements have to be computer controlled. Sure, it's nice to be able to stop them from charging in like retards, but would it have been so hard to make it so that clicking that little unit card on the right switched the UI to display that particular army's unit cards? I was hoping to have as much control over the reinforcements as the main army.

I can't honestly say it feels any different this way than the old way. I'd actually rather control them myself and just rout my first army when it's done so that I can bring in the second.

If someone figured out how to change this it would make things WAY more fun, but I'm guessing it's a hardcoded thing.

[Trajan]

That's what I originally thought the concept of controlling your reinforcements meant. It's better than before though.

[T-wester]

i like it, a big improvement and great to hammer and anvil the enemy

[Legione]

Honestly, it isn't that bad. If you think about those huge battles and having two entire stacks to control I could see it becoming frustrating. Then again we do have that slow motion feature...

[UniQ]

I saw this recently in a battle, my city was attacked by a shitloard of units and I didnt have that many.
Though I had a big army standing beside me and I juse hope I would hold.
The problem was that the system is retarded, I put them on aggressive and what did they do? The placed themselves on the spot where the enemy came from on the map, far away from the city wich I was making my last stand at.
Luckly I managed to win with like 20 men left.
Retarded AI -_-

[M2TWRocks]

Yeah, I had hoped I would be able to tell them WHERE to defend from, attack from, or remain idle until I was ready. Its a little misleading to say you can control reinforcements, when you actually control their stance. It is an improvement, but not a big one. In other words, it hasn't really changed the way I approach battles, or made me more apt to use multiple armies versus one big stack.

Here's an example:

I had always wanted to have bigger armies with artillery batteries, forward screening/harassing units, stuff like that. I tried this out multiple times in custom battles. I made a main mixed army that I would control directly, a skirmisher cavalry assault force set to aggressive, and an artillery battery with spearmen for protection.

The cavalry force spread out in a line as long as the battlefield and slowly walked from one side of the screen to the location of the enemy. They took about ten minutes to get without range of the enemy, but only the closest cav assaulted(about 3 units out of 20). In other words they did not run towards enemy and attack all at once. Matter of fact, the battle was pretty much over once they got there since they were walking.

It seems like this feature is best used to keep your reinforcements from doing ridiculous things like charging their one and only general, alone, into 14 units of spearmen. It is definately an improvement, but a bit of a letdown.

Cheers.

[Dagda]

^^ haha

The reinforcement AI is so terrible. I put a fairly large force on 'Aggressive' and 20 seconds later the General was routing because he decided to charge 3 full units of spears - alone.

This happened despite us having near a 2:1 advantage in troop strength.

[Lionel-Richie]

I thought you *could* pick where you want them to defend form. I set 'em on defensive, click their card and right click the area. Notice how you get contextual icons for their card.

I may be wrong, but I could swear I can get them to be defensive where I want.

[Emperor Raven]

I always use it to send in a small stack of mercenaries to soften the enemy up then send in my good troops. Every time I've used it though, the AI let the general die which was somewhat annoying.

[Ged]

My men didn't do anything. At all. On Agressive, even when I clicked on a unit for them to attack. They changed their formation. That was it. Yay.

[xxax]

I like it. You can click where you want them to be and control their stance. Anything more would be direct control over them.

[OmegaRED]

It's a terrible feature.

The reinforcements run pretty much anytime you order them somewhere and tire themselves out. Would a walk feature have been too much to ask? Also, why can't we manually place the reinforcements in a formation. If I toggle between the modes all it does is cause them to run all over the place and if ordered to attack the freaking general charges by himself without waiting for his army to catch up to him.

[Mike13531]

man, i lost because i had no idea how to control reinfocements, x_x, what is this.. honestly , would it kill them to just have a hotkey that switches??

[Mellons]

This feature sucks. Now with a half stack attacking with another half stack as reinforcement I cannot contol the reinforcement even though they are 20 or less units combined.

They old system allowed me to control both stacks only when the reinforcement army didnt exceed my own max 20 unit control.

Thought this feature was to add control to reinforcement but the AI is just utterly useless. Id rather control 50 units then let the AI take command.

[Eddard]

This feature sucks. Now with a half stack attacking with another half stack as reinforcement I cannot contol the reinforcement even though they are 20 or less units combined.

They old system allowed me to control both stacks only when the reinforcement army didnt exceed my own max 20 unit control.

You can still control the reinforcements like before. Just unckeck the little computer icon you get before the battle. It's right under the reinforcement general's portrait.

[Monsieur Alphonse]

This feature sucks. Now with a half stack attacking with another half stack as reinforcement I cannot contol the reinforcement even though they are 20 or less units combined.

They old system allowed me to control both stacks only when the reinforcement army didnt exceed my own max 20 unit control.

Thought this feature was to add control to reinforcement but the AI is just utterly useless. Id rather control 50 units then let the AI take command.

If you have two stacks that together have lass than 20 units, unclick the computer control function and you can control them the "old way".

Regarding the reinforcements feature:
I think it needs some practice but it can be an useful feature. I used it to defeat two English stacks as New Spain. My first manual controlled stack consisted of a general, artillery, musketeers, infantry and cavalry. The second AI controlled stack but under my guidance, consisted of lots of crappy native mercenaries, a general and some dismounted and mounted conquistadores. I was hoping that the English would attack me while the reinforcements would attack the English left flank, so I put the reinforcements on defensive. You can control were you want them, but I placed them to near to the English and the English attacked them. This was even better as it left the English right flank open for my attack so I gave the reinforcements the order to attack (offensive stand) and attacked also. My reinforcement army lost quite a lot of men mostly natives, its conquistadores units lost about a third and the general survived. My army hardly lost any men. I beat two English stacks with (they didn't have weak units) with one strong stack and one stack I used as cannon fodder.

Conclusion:
You can order the reinforcements to a place were you want them.
Don't use the best stack you have as reinforcements. use inferior units to bind the enemy and attack with your strong stack.
AI generals can survive.